Anekdota

   Literally Unpublished Things, which is how the work is titled in Souda (q.v.), where one finds the earliest reference to it. The popular conventional title in English is Secret History. This scurrilous diatribe against Justinian I, Theodora, Belisarios, and Antonina (qq.v.) was apparently written by the official historian of Justinian I's reign, Prokopios of Caesarea (q.v.). The premise of the work is that Justinian I and Theodora were demons in disguise who delighted in trying to destroy the empire. The contrast with Prokopios's other major works, the Wars and The Buildings, is so striking that some scholars have rejected it as coming from the pen of Prokopios. Nevertheless, an analysis of the style of the Anekdota has made it clear that Prokopios is indeed its author. He may have written the work to express in private the anger that he could not express in public. Despite the work's bias, there is much useful information in the Anekdota.